At the very simplest level, many of the common words we use today derive from ancient myths. Here are some examples:
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Janus, pictured at left from a Roman coin, was the Roman god of doorways, and hence of new beginnings, of times when we look both forward and backward (notice he has two faces, looking in opposite directions). His name survives in the month of January, the opening of the new year. |
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Mars was the Roman god of war (pictured at right, in the helmet). When astronomers discovered a planet which appeared to be red—a color associated with blood and war—this god’s name seemed a logical choice. All of the nine planets, except for Earth, are named after Roman gods. |
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Odin was the chief god in Norse mythology, and also the god of war, poetry, wisdom, and magic. There are several variant spellings of his name, including Wotan, Wodan, and Woden, and it’s from the last of these that we get the English word Wednesday. Another Norse god, Thor, gave us the name for Thursday, and their goddess of love, Freya, gave us the name for Friday. |
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Venus, pictured here in a famous Renaissance statue called the Venus de Medici, was the Roman goddess of love and beauty, and gives us not only the name of the planet Venus, but the name of an entire category of sexually transmitted diseases, called “venereal” diseases. Venus’s son, the god of love, was named Cupid in Roman mythology and Eros in Greek mythology. In one of the great love stories of classical mythology, Cupid fell in love with a maiden named . . . |
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Psyche (pictured here in a painting by the 19th century English artist Waterhouse), whose legendary beauty caused Venus to grow jealous and vindictive. After many sufferings, Psyche was reunited with Cupid, made immortal, and became a personification of the soul. Since her name is associated with the soul (and by implication the mind), it provides the basis for such words as psychology, psychic, psychotic, psychotherapy, etc. |
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If you are interested, here is the complete story of Cupid and Psyche in Bulfinch’s Mythology. |
There is an almost endless number of other examples we could give—Hygieia, the goddess of health (hygiene); Morpheus, the god of sleep (morphine); Narcissus, a young man so beautiful that he fell in love with his own reflection (narcissism, narcissistic); Echo, a talkative young woman who was punished for deceiving the goddess Juno by being permitted only to repeat what others had said, etc.
